X Corp. v. Media Matters for America, No. 4:23-CV-01175-O, N.D. Tex. (July 23, 2026), full opinion (PDF)
A platform that files suit is still a communications provider, and the Stored Communications Act (SCA) still governs what it can hand over in its own case. A July 23 order from the Northern District of Texas works through that problem and draws a line between two kinds of deleted posts. Formerly public posts a platform still retains are shielded from civil discovery when the user deleted them, and producible when the platform removed them.
The question was open. The parties had not provided, and the court had not found, "a case squarely addressing whether such posts are subject to protection by the SCA."
What Happened
X Corp. sued Media Matters and two individual defendants, alleging they fabricated side-by-side images of advertisers' posts next to neo-Nazi or other extremist content and then portrayed those images as what the average user experiences on X.
In discovery, Media Matters asked X to produce all content posted to a set of accounts, including content that had been removed, suspended, or otherwise disciplined. It separately moved to compel X to lift SCA redactions applied to internal emails about content on the platform. X invoked the SCA as to both. Currently public posts were not in dispute. What remained were formerly public posts in two groups, those deleted by a user and those removed by X.
The Court's Analysis
The SCA bars a provider from divulging the contents of a communication held in electronic storage, which the statute defines to include storage for backup protection. Media Matters argued the retained copies serve no backup function and urged the court to follow a California appellate decision holding that a platform's business access to user content puts the material outside the statute. The court found no textual basis for a business-purpose limit and reasoned that if a post remains accessible to the company after deletion, "a copy of the post must be stored in some fashion as protection against destruction."
That put the posts inside the statute and left only the enumerated exceptions. As the court noted, "The SCA does not provide an exception to its general prohibition on disclosure for civil subpoenas." Media Matters argued that X could produce the posts under the exception permitting disclosure to protect a provider's own rights or property, since X had brought the suit. Reading that exception so broadly, the court warned, would mean that whenever a platform sued or was sued, "a discovery subpoena could be used to eviscerate the protections of the SCA by seeking any nonpublic information that might have relevance to the case."
The consent exception is where the two groups of posts part. A user who posts publicly has, in the court's words, "unequivocally consented to disclosure," and the platform's later removal of that post gives no sign the user withdrew consent. Those posts must be produced. A user who deletes a post is doing the opposite, and the court held that ordering production would contravene the user's recapture of privacy. Those posts stay protected.
The same line governs the redactions. Internal emails are not outside the statute merely because they are corporate records. When X employees discuss a user's post, the court held, the email carries the substance of that communication and the SCA reaches it, so whether a redaction stands depends on who deleted the post underneath it.
Because X cannot always tell which posts users deleted, the court ordered it to take reasonable and good faith measures to locate and produce responsive posts, and to "create a privilege log of the undisclosed posts."
Why It Matters
Any party running a messaging service, a collaboration platform, or a social product holds communications the SCA may protect, and this order is a reminder that the protection does not lapse when that party walks into court. Relevance under Rule 26 does not displace the statute, and there is no civil discovery carve-out to fall back on.
The practical work sits at the metadata level. Producibility turned on a fact many platforms do not record reliably, which is whether the user or the system removed the item. X told the court it can estimate but not determine with certainty which of the two occurred. Counsel advising a platform client should ask early whether deletion events are logged, by whom, and with what confidence, because the answer sets both the scope of production and the size of the log that accompanies it.
Requesting parties get a map from the same reasoning. Public posts later removed by the platform are fair game, private and user-deleted content is not, and a privilege log for the withheld set is the tool for testing where a particular post falls.
The full opinion is available as a PDF.
